LeftyChris wrote: "Sounds to me like you're a budding lesbian just itching to bust out. And that's perfectly fine. But just get it over with already! That way your husband can actually seek out someone who appreciates him and finds him sexually attractive and appealing, poor guy."

Whoa thar, son. I've heard of people painting themselves into a corner, but by crickedy, you went and painted AKASmith into a corner.

Did you read this thread? There are lots of data about the plasticity of women's sexuality.

You read that AKASmith admires the female form and you yell, "Divorce! Divorce!"

I imagine you as the captain of an aircraft carrier and you enter the galley and you hear bacon sizzling.

But then you see fire beneath the bacon and you shout, "Fire! Fire! Abandon ship!"

You've got the jitters, son.

I have to find some magic beans to grow a beanstalk to reach your fingers, for they're the fingers that lay the golden words.

But first I have to find a cow to barter for those beans.

When I see men and women separate by gender, through their 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s, I think, "We join to procreate. After that, it's as it was in 2nd grade, when boys played on their parcel of the playground and girls on theirs."

Thanks, Rachael F.

I cower behind the untarnishing para-truth: the more men you know, Biblically-speaking, the less you know.

Sometimes I wonder if the most oblique of my references tickle anyone. I'm glad that they do you.

And I'm not surprised that you've sold your words. Not a bit.

After I wrote what I wrote, I thought, "Ah, ya fool, she's probably already being paid to write."

You could still expand what you wrote and sell it.

that's the best post I've ever read at Salon and perhaps the best post I've ever read on the Internet. I'm a professional writer and it's professional grade writing. Sell it. Really. You could.

Damn, woman, you have talent. Insight. Courage. All of it.

Breathe.

Firefly one half/one quarter/one tenth agreed with half/one quarter/one tenth of what I'm slinging...and I am slinging. I'm making it up as I go, so if it's circuitous, I'm not surprised. And for those of you who counter with calcified laws of nature, well, shame, shame, on your family name (which is often "anonymous," btw). We're complex. If you can accept that, then why be certain and simple about your sexuality? If your sexuality is simple and perpetual and forever straight-forward, then how do you explain the ubiquitous girl-on-girl crush, which is followed by procreative marriage, which is interrupted by more girl-on-girl crushes?

If you assert that it's just a wisp o' thought, then you too probably assert, "Yeah, I did, but I didn't inhale."

Canuckistan Bob, you're funny! And sure, the idea might be peculiar, buy why? Because you've never contemplated it? I think one could make a general case for self-loathing, given all the cell phone-driving, drinking, overeating, overspending, and unprotected bone-bumping that people do. As I posted in another thread, Ben Franklin once asserted that 4 of 5 men are slow suicides. I think that's still so. Don't you? And self-loathing might be a component of the slow suicides. And loathing sex with people who look like you might be a symptom of self-loathing.

"The Denial of Death," where Becker comes undone trying to assert that Michaelangelo's homosexuality was narcissitically necessary to sustain his focus on creation.

So, Bob, do you recoil from your sexuality? Do you pity your partners who must endure your body?

I know these questions might seem harsh, given your history, but I can't connect your dots and say, "Oh, I see."

There were a lot of "straight" men sleeping with men.

Likewise, when polled, more men admit to homosexual encounters than women.

And the down low numbers are way up there.

Now, what about you has you blankly denying what I suggest?

"For what it's worth, I think that first "anonymous" was absolutely correct in her assessment of your post."

So, Anonymous was 100% correct? At least you're cool with that.

"While we are extremely variable, it is yet another box to crawl into to declare that people who say that they are straight or even absolutely straignt are somehow traveling de Nile."

Yep. I agree. I took an extreme position in response to Hillarys' answer, which reminded me, in its attempt to reassure the majority that Hillary is conforming to the majority, of Ted Haggard's "100% heterosexual."

I've slept with a lot of men and when one does, one gathers a data base.

One thing I've had quite a few men say (I prefer construction workers who sweat testosterone.) is, "If I were a woman, I'd sleep with women. Men are disgusting."

And that disgusts me.

I reply, "Then why should I sleep with you if men are disgusting?"

This is the source of my hypothesis that self-loathing powers homophobia.

Likewise, I've had many straight girlfriends opine that their crotches are disgusting and they don't know how their hubbies/boyfriends bear cunnilingus.

What disgusts me is that these women are disgusted by their bodies.

In the end, we're all navel-gazers, projecting this way and that. Given our national spasm regarding sexuality, a logical and possible explanation for the sustained tension is that we're self-loathing. This certainly feeds into some of the theories of guys like Otto Rank, who conjectured that being locked in perpetually decaying vessels powers our many neuroses.

Note, firefly82, the resistance to what I suggested. Maybe this is due to my being wrong, wrong, wrong, or maybe I've touched a collective nerve.

So, unpack your assertion that you're "just not aroused by" women. Why? They have lips and eyes. Arms and legs. Chins and ears. Feet and hands. Even bladders and hearts. They're 90ish% just like men. What's the deal-breaker?

Nice comment, Juliebird.